Discussing the linkages between local entrepreneurship and tourism provides an intriguing starting point for a wider reflection on the role of existing policies and of emerging practices in fostering local development in peripheral areas.

Peripheral areas can be considered as areas relatively far from urban hubs providing essential services, typically suffering from de-anthropisation and marginalisation, though provided with a wide range of environmental, cultural and social resources.

In this sense, the investigation of the linkages between local entrepreneurship and tourism in peripheral areas, and of the role of existing policies and of the arising bottom-up practices in fostering local development, is aimed at deconstructing basic dichotomies often emerging when dealing with such issues, i.e. rural-urban and/or centre-periphery relationships, innovation vs tradition, authenticity vs mise en scene, agency vs inertia, social, cultural, economic mobility vs immobility etc. Moreover, focussing attention on the possible compliance or conflicting strategies of local actors with existing policies allows the possibilities arising from the analysis of local entrepreneurs as agents of change to be taken into consideration

In focusing on relevant case studies we are able to shed light on local entrepreneurship in peripheral areas in relation to tourism. Representative topics shall include, but are not limited to, the following:

Theoretical and practical approaches to the concept of peripherality in relation to tourism entrepreneurialism and the emergence of peculiar tourism-niches (e.g. food tourism in rural areas);

The role of local entrepreneurship in the development of tourism in peripheral areas as a form of resilience to the implications of (economic) marginality;

Migrants’ forms of agency and their impact on local entrepreneurship in peripheral areas in relation to the leisure market (i.e. leisure migrants);

The possible ways in which different takes on tradition and innovation can influence territorial marketing strategies in peripheral areas;

The “tourismification” and/ or “touristification” (Salazar 2009) of material and immaterial heritage in peripheral areas as a possible consequence of local entrepreneurship;

Key factors in the development of a tourism-led local entrepreneurship in peripheral areas;

Challenges of tourism promotion and local development: the urban- rural nexus;

Competitive strategies among local entrepreneurs in rural/peripheral area tourism.

Abstracts of max 300 words, written in English, should be submitted for selection to Maria Giulia Pezzi at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., by August 31st, 2017. Please CC Alessandra Faggian (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and Neil Reid (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

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The Regional Science Association International (RSAI), founded in 1954, is an international community of scholars interested in the regional impacts of national or global processes of economic and social change.